The Johannesburg CBD is one of the busiest and dirtiest area in the entire Joburg municipality. The visible aspects of poor maintenance is the amount of potholes found in the city streets. The street width shows that it was built along time ago, and evidence of this is the buildings surrounding the streets(Jacobs, A). the curbs help the taxi stay on the road and not on the pavement where people usually commute. Maintenance according to Jacobs shows that streets are not taken care of due to high level of taxi's and cars, causing the potholes to occur(Jacobs, A)
References
1)Jacobs, A. (1985) Looking at cities. (Chapter 3 Clues). Harvard University Press
this street would be regarded as an intense street because a lot of vehicles are using the street with people at the same time
ReplyDeletembula khwashaba posted the previous comment
ReplyDeleteSamukelisiwe Makwakwa, I have been there more than once,and I have to say that it is not a comfortable place to be. There are informal businesses in each and every corner you look at. Trying to sell things to you that you do not need,they even go to the extent of touching you with the aim of pulling you to come see what they are selling, which limits my comfortability in this area. Sometimes there is dirty water coming from dirty building and just by passing there,the smell makes you feel like you will catch on some sort of a disease. I wonder if the municipality has not seen this as dis-functional with regard to the CBD. Also the lack of pedestrian crossings is just beyond my level of understanding,how are we expected to cross those busy streets when there are dangerous taxis passing all the time.
ReplyDeletepatience bosaka: ok you guys are saying a lot of interesting things about the inner city, problem is you are discribing what everyone can see, in that sence you are not really observing the city like a planner, Mbula has attempted to analyze but i would advise you to tel us more about what an intense street is,Samukelisiwe you talk about an important planning concept(comfortability)but you are not really telling us all the elements that define this concept, to other people street venders and their habits may not alter or disturb their comfort, it may even give them a sense of security knowing that the street is filled with people who will observe any unusual or threatening behaviour
ReplyDeleteI get what you mean but i was posting that in relation to what Edwin was talking about,how the place is dis-functional if i may put in that sense.If you would like to know more on what I think about the comfortability of the place I shall post something on that.
ReplyDeletezintathu mazamane: @patience, people might explain comfortibity in different ways and not everything i am comfortable with will also make comfortable. i can relate this situation to the feeling of exposure and enclosure that cullen talks about. some people have claustrophobia and some have agoraphobia, for me this then explains that people might feel differently in the same area. what i like might be your phobia...i believe that it all depends on "our reactions to the position of our body to the environment" (cullen, 1961).
ReplyDeleteIt would have been nice if you had a locality map so that we could know where exactly the place you are analyzing is located.I am finding it difficult to understand exactly what you are analyzing in the CBD ;it would have been nice to just state exactly which aspects within the CBD you are looking at:are you looking at the streets,buildings,sidewalks etc.What also would have been nice is if you maybe show another area in the CBD that is functioning well just so we could see what you define as a good or well maintained environment.
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